


in the aftermath, the melody carries on

by keyflowers



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fluff, M/M, adhd autistic jonathan sims, is it fluff? i think it's fluff, it's fluff by the end anyway, lonely!martin but it's fine he gets better, post-159 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:13:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22540780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keyflowers/pseuds/keyflowers
Summary: Jonathan Sims doesn't sing around other people anymore.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 26
Kudos: 334





	in the aftermath, the melody carries on

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by conversations had in the rusty quill discord. jon stans can have little a projection, as a treat.
> 
> title from the song "woodwork" by sleeping at last.

When Jon was a child, he used to sing.

It was not something he could ever remember deciding to do, but rather something that happened to him: the music filtered into him, from the radio or his grandmother’s record player, and inevitably it made its way back out. Sometimes he imagined himself as a little record player of his own, always spinning and spinning, and when you put the needle down a song would come out of him at whatever point it had been at in his head — in the middle of a phrase, sometimes. He would sing while he walked, while he colored, while he got dressed. He would even sing while he read, sometimes, mouth and brain unconnected.

Eventually, however, it became clear to him that his singing was just one of the many things that made him an annoying, unlikable child.

Other children would look at him strangely when it happened in the hallways, or shove him in the shoulder and tell him to shut up when he did it next to them on the bus. His grandmother, though she had tolerated it as a cuteness when he was younger, grew irritated with it as well; trying to focus on whatever work she was doing, she sometimes snapped at him to _stop making that noise_ from where he was sitting the next room over. 

He hated the wash of frustration and shame that came over him whenever someone caught him out at it, especially given that half the time he wasn’t even aware he’d started singing. It was so much a reflex, so much a part of him, that learning to know when he was doing it only started when the scolding did. But he did learn. The singing became a murmuring under his breath became a humming became nothing more than an impression behind closed lips, a phantom sound in his mind that he refused to let out into the air, because there were people near, there were always people near, and it wasn’t allowed. He saved his songs for his excursions, the adventures away from home that took him into the woods and fields, empty mysterious spaces where nobody cared what he did until the police came to take him home.

It never entirely went away, the music that sat inside him. Instead, it joined the litany of other strange things about himself that he masked away until it was safe to let them out, like the way he rubbed his skin against fabrics for the texture, or the snapping of his fingers while he worked through his ideas, or that subtle desire to rock when he was sitting on an uncomfortable chair. Long before he was an Archive, he was a collection of behaviors others didn’t want to see. When he sang, it was behind closed doors, safe and alone.

* * *

Jon doesn’t sing in front of people.

Martin knows this, though he also knows that that fact doesn’t mean that Jon doesn’t _sing._ Around others, he’s never heard Jon sing more than a few syllables. There were occasions, before everything went wrong, when Tim would drag Jon out with the rest of them for drinks, and drinks with Tim often led to at least one song being led by Tim’s dulcet bass tones, but where Sasha would chime in an octave up and Martin would put his own dubious pitch to the test, Jon only ever mumbled along half-heartedly, if he opened his mouth at all.

Alone, though — it isn’t a secret, the walls aren’t that thick and they’ve all caught him at it a time or two. Martin’s heard Jon humming absentmindedly before as he thumbs through a statement, only ever a few bars, like he’d begun without thinking and stopped as soon as he realized what he was doing. Once, he’d passed by Jon’s closed office door and heard the muffled sound of singing within, not loud, certainly not clear enough to make out any words or more than the suggestion of a tune, but unmistakably Jon. He’d stopped for just a moment, drawn to a tentative halt outside Jon’s door, and then hurried onward; it was Jon’s privacy, after all, and it would be rude to listen.

He’s never asked why Jon only ever sings in private. Martin understands well enough the need to keep some things to yourself. And lately, of course, keeping things to himself is all Martin ever does.

He’s in the break room when the door handle turns, and with an instinctual spike of alarm, he is not-there. It’s rapidly becoming a habit, this disappearing at the sound of other people, and he _does_ feel guilty about it, sort of; it isn’t very fair of him to let other people go around having their conversations and not knowing he’s there. But, well, people have done that plenty of times when he _wasn’t_ invisible, too. If his being-overlooked has gone from unfortunate evidence of his social status to a supernatural power, well, might as well make use of it. Avoids conversations he doesn’t want to have. Peter would be proud, he thinks with a faint hint of disgust.

So the door opens, and Martin, about to fill up the kettle, is apparently no longer in the room. He watches with a slight pang, not-there, as Jon walks in.

It’s the first time he’s seen Jon since before he left for Ny-Alesund. A small part of him had wanted to do this earlier, to come down to the Archives, not-there, and see how he was doing, but he had stifled the urge; it was enough to know that Jon was back, alive. He shouldn’t even be here _now._ He should slip out the door before it closes. He shouldn’t have come down here, banking on the break room’s vacancy, when Jon — when someone might be around.

But he’s here, and he doesn’t move. Instead he watches Jon, who’s reading a paper clutched in his hand (can’t be a statement, as far as Martin can tell he doesn’t read those silently anymore) as he enters. His brow is furrowed, and Martin can see the bags under his eyes even from here as Jon frowns down at whatever he’s reading. The sweater he’s wearing looks too large for him, like it’s been stretched out and not cared for very well, or maybe it simply hangs off his frame because he’s lost weight. His hair just keeps getting longer; it’s hanging partly in his face, streaked with grey.

He looks a mess. He looks small, and tired, and alone. Martin should look away.

And then the door swings shut behind him, and Jon starts singing.

It isn’t abrupt; it starts soft, a murmur that becomes a quiet song, let loose into the air like it had been waiting for freedom. Martin presses his own lips together tightly, pressing himself farther into the shadows of his vanishment. He’s never heard Jon sing this long before. It’s — it’s not perfect; his voice is tired and a little ragged, and he sometimes drops into a hum when it seems like he doesn’t know all the words. But his baritone is, by and large, steady and gentle. It strikes Martin that it doesn’t quite _match_ the exhausted, pockmarked man in front of him. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine the voice coming from a younger Jon, an unscarred Jon. As he should have been, if he’d never come to this place.

Martin gets a fresh pang when he realizes that the song Jon is singing is a love song.

Jon tucks whatever he’d been reading into a pocket and heads for the kettle that Martin had been about to use, making himself tea, singing softly to himself all the while. As he does, Martin watches some of the tension leak out of him: his shoulders, so often hunched inward against the world, relax, and his face loses its pinched and furrowed expression. Martin can almost see the music smoothing Jon out into something calmer, less frantic and frayed. By the time his tea is ready and he turns back toward the door, he looks almost peaceful.

He sings the last quiet notes of his song, letting them fade back into silence, and then sighs. From behind, Martin watches his head dip slightly, as if he’s closed his eyes for a moment. His fingers clutch his tea tightly, pressing against the mug’s warmth. Then he squares his shoulders like a soldier steeling himself to march off to war, and opens the door, heading back out into the Archives.

Martin lingers after he leaves, watching the door swing shut. The echoes of the song fade far too quickly back into a dead silence. He has just watched, he thinks, something sacred — had watched Jon wrap the music around himself like a cloak, something to soothe him and protect him from the rest of the world when he thought he was alone. And he _had_ thought he was alone, Martin reminds himself; this small ritual had been for Jon, and Jon alone. He would never have done it in front of Martin, not willingly. 

And Martin had forfeited the right to take anything from Jon a long time ago.

After a long moment, Martin leaves the break room too, still wreathed in fog and nothingness. He doesn’t make the tea he’d come here to get; he doesn’t touch the kettle whose handle must still be warm from Jon’s palm. There’s no reason for him to come all this way just for some tea, anyway. There are other places he can go, places far away from the Archives and its Archivist.

He won’t let this happen again.

* * *

Later — later, after the panopticon, after the fog-wrapped shore, after Jon led him out of the Lonely with a hand wrapped around his. Later, deep in the Scottish highlands, Martin will still feel an echo of that emptiness inside him, especially when the fields outside their cottage lie heavy with fog. Sometimes, he nearly disappears again, nearly fades into the background like a bad dream, and it’s only Jon’s warmth that calls him back. He may be gone from the Lonely, but the Lonely is not entirely gone from him; he isn’t sure it ever quite will be.

So you can’t blame him, for being worried.

He’s curled up on the couch when it happens, crocheting. Jon wanders in, clutching a newspaper, and makes his way towards the couch. He’s wearing one of Martin’s sweaters, his hair pulled back in a loose bun with one of the hair ties Martin had gotten for him so his hair would stop falling in his eyes at every turn. And as Martin glances up, taking in his appearance with a smile, Jon, eyes still trained on the article he’s reading, begins to sing.

Martin stills, a greeting falling dead before it leaves his lips. It’s the first time he’s heard Jon sing since that day in the break room. His voice sounds better than it did then — stronger, after a couple of weeks of rest, more steady and natural, the hint of a small smile curling around the notes. But Martin feels a spike of panic as he realizes that Jon is _singing_ when Martin is _right here._ He’d felt fine, or he’d thought he’d felt fine; the numb, empty feeling that usually precedes his disappearing had been totally absent. The sky is clear outside. He’d been fine.

He’d been doing _well._ So why—

“Jon,” Martin says, coughing slightly and trying very hard to be _here_ , to be _present._ “You — you can see me, right?”

“Hm?” Jon breaks off, glancing briefly up from his newspaper as he settles into the couch, pulling his legs up under him. “Yes, Martin, of course.” He’s got his distracted voice on, obviously still thinking about whatever he’s reading, and his eyes go back to the page right away, but he’d looked at Martin, shown no surprise at his presence. And once his attention is settled back on the page, the quiet murmur of song starts back up again.

Martin breathes out, a shaky, relieved breath, and watches Jon with wide-eyed realization. He hasn’t disappeared. Jon’s singing in front of him, and he _knows Martin’s there._

When he goes back to his crocheting, it’s with a smile he can’t hide tugging all the way across his face.

A minute or two later, Jon reaches the end of his article — and Martin _might_ have been sneaking glances at him, might have been paying more attention to the quiet rumble of his voice than to his stitches, but can you blame him — and seems to become aware of himself again. The song, not quite finished, stumbles and fades on his lips as he looks up — and then does a double-take at Martin. “Oh,” he says, and presses his lips together, something furtive and apologetic taking the place of the easy expression he’d been wearing. “Oh, was I — I’m, I’m sorry, Martin, I didn’t realize, I, I hope that wasn’t terribly annoying.”

Ah. That — that does something, to Martin’s heart; suddenly he thinks he knows why Jon keeps his singing to himself. His own mother’s voice echoes briefly in his ears. Here he’d been, drinking in Jon’s voice, and Jon’s first thought is to worry that he’d _bothered_ Martin. 

Deliberately, Martin puts down his hook and reaches for one of Jon’s hands. “Actually, I thought it was really lovely.”

Instinctively, it seems, Jon squeezes his hand back, though he blushes, not quite meeting Martin’s eyes. “Oh. Uh. Really? I usually — I mean. I try not to, usually, in front of people. In fact, I — I _don’t_ , ever.” And now he’s looking at Martin, and there’s something almost like wonder in his gaze, and Martin — Martin doesn’t think he’ll _ever_ be used to Jon looking at him like that. “U-Until now, apparently.”

Martin brings Jon’s hand up, and — hovering for a moment first, as he always does, giving Jon the chance to indicate if it isn’t all right — presses a gentle kiss to Jon’s knuckles. He tries to direct as much earnestness, as much warmth, into his voice as he ever had into the tea he’d made for Jon day after day, year after year. “Well, I liked it. I hope you’ll keep doing it. If you want to.”

A smile brushes over Jon’s face; like most of Jon’s smiles, it is small and fleeting and sweet, like worn, loved fabric. He tucks himself into Martin’s side, leans his head against Martin’s shoulder. When he speaks, Martin can feel the rumble of it through both their torsos. “Maybe I will.”

* * *

Their cottage is not full of song afterwards. It is not that sort of cottage; this is not that sort of fairy tale. But there is music _in_ it, in small and comfortable ways. There are snatches of song tossed between them as they make dinner. Jon murmurs quiet songs as he tidies up, as he washes his hair, as they settle in together for bed. When Jon tells Martin about the old record player his grandmother used to have, Martin goes into town and buys a turntable from a vintage store and they set it up in the living room; part of their evenings are spent chuckling over the old records Martin had picked out nearly at random. 

And when Loneliness threatens to creep in, Jon wraps his arms around Martin, holding him close, and his humming resonates through Martin’s body until he feels that he could never possibly be anywhere else.

**Author's Note:**

> the love song jon's singing in the break room can be anything you like to imagine, but i was listening to "love me with all your heart" (the moominvalley soundtrack version) as i wrote it.
> 
> thanks for reading <3 catch me on the discord or on [tumblr!](http://wistfulsong.tumblr.com)


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